Category: Google Storage

Google Storage Nearline is a low-cost, highly durable storage service that allows companies to easily backup and store large amounts of data. This makes it ideal for using as an archive and, in the case of this example, for Business Continuity purposes.

Storage pricing for Cloud Storage Nearline is very low at 1 cent per GB, per month and the Google Cloud Platform Pricing Calculator can help estimate full costs.

What we are going to demonstrate is how Google Storage Nearline can be used as an archive for business continuity purposes using the Storage Made Easy service to provide CloudSurance, or Cloud Insurance of a primary data cloud.

Google Nearline which enables customers to store data that is long-lived but infrequently accessed. Nearline data has the same durability and comparable availability as Standard storage but with lower storage costs. You can read the Google Nearline white paper for more details.

At Storage Made Easy we recently announced the support of Google Nearline and the purpose of this post is to step through how to use Google Nearline with the SME solution.

For those who use the Enterprise File Share and Sync service from Storage Made Easy they will know that as part of the Windows and Mac desktop tools that are provided that there is a n email toolbar integration into Mac Mail and Microsoft Outlook that enables users to securely share file links rather than file attachments.

Once added this provides a new toolbar entry when composing Gmail’s on Chrome:

Once selected this prompts the user to log into their SME Account, if SaaS, or the user can set their custom endpoint if using the SME On-Site Enterprise File Share and Sync solution:

Once logged in the user is presented with their mapped clouds:

From here files can be shared as links can be shared from any of the mapped cloud directories:

If a cloud governance file policy has been set by the Cloud Administrator for the team account then the details here will be pre-populated otherwise options can be chosen prior to link generation. After this when share is clicked, the link is added to the email:

When the link is shared, if Auditing is turned on within the SME Account, then the link generation will be recorded in the Audit log and once the remote user opens the link the remote IP address will also be recorded.

We have introduced a new feature into the Storage Made Easy platform which enables cloud users to share external folders to other users who will not need a SME Account to gain access to those folders. The feature enables the creation of a secure shared link that is password protected and can be time expired.

Midnight Commander is probably the most popular command line file manager in the world, and certainly for Linux distros. Its design was initially inspired by the classic two pane interface that was found in Norton Commander which was a DOS file manager (for those who remember !).

One of the unsung features of the Midnight Commander (also available on other platforms including phones (I used to use this on my old Nokia N900) and windows and mac) is that it can connect to server over FTP.

This is interesting from a Storage Made Easy viewpoint as although SME providers a full suite of Linux tools, SME also provider protocol interoperability as part of its Cloud Gateway features. What is this I hear you ask ? Well, simply put, it enables files you have stored on public or private storage to be accessible over any of the protocols Storage Made Easy exposes ie FTP, FTPS, WebDav, S3, SFTP.

Midnight Commander supports the FTP protocol which makes it easy to get direct access to any storage that is added to a SME Account using the SME FTP cloud protocol adaptor. To do this:

Choose the Left or Right option
Choose FTP link
Enter connection to SME as follows:

username:password@storagemadeeasy.com

or if you are using the SME EU Server:

username:password@eu.storagemadeeasy.com

The net result is a very easy way to bring the cloud into the linux desktop integrated with tools you already know and use. This can be used with the SME Personal CLoud plan, Business Team, and on-site enterprise editions of the product.

Storage Made Easy have now made live a new SFTP protocol adaptor. SFTP is one of the two primary technologies for secure FTP networking, the other being FTPS, which Storage Made Easy already supports (along with FTP, WebDav, Secure WebDav and S3).

The primary reason we investigated implementing SFTP is due to a government POC in which access was required to secure AWSGov Cloud files from medical terminals. This was the primary requirement, but because Storage Made Easy works with almost any back-end Cloud. once added, it can be used as protocol gateway for any cloud mapped to an account, note that the Port is 2200

Below is an example of using the SFTP protocol to access a Storage Made Easy account using Transmit (a Mac App).

Once connected, all data and mapped clouds are accessible.

Access can also be done directly from the command line.

Once connected we can do an ls to get a file listing.

Once connected the view of the files is similar to our earlier UI view.

To find out more about the SME protocol gateway feature that is part of the SME solution please check out the below video.

SFTP Cloud files Access is available for Storage Made Easy IaaS or on-site users.

We have added a new feature to the Storage Made Easy platform, real time document collaboration. This is available for team account or Enterprise File Share and Sync on-premise users. It enables real time document editing between team members when inline editing using the web document editor. It enables multiple users to open a document at the same time, and enables with everyone to contribute and/or review the document in real time.

This editing facility is available for any document in any cloud that is mapped to work with SME, be it public or private storage (for EFSS on-site users).